June 7 marked the 100th day since the conflict between Iran on one side and Israel and the United States on the other began. Forty days of war were followed by two months of uneasy peace. But within the span of 24 hours, the fragile veil of calm that had settled over the region was torn to shreds, pushing the Middle East back to the brink of a wider conflict.
So, what precipitated the exchange when a ceasefire was already in place?
For Iran, Beirut has been the red line. Even after Iran and Israel traded strikes on the intervening nights of June 7 and 8 before agreeing to stop again, Tehran warned that its restraint had limits. Iran’s armed forces said any future Israeli attack on Lebanon would trigger even “harsher” retaliation, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.
“Tehran had been tolerating recent Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon but drew a red line on Beirut,” senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and founder of The Iran Podcast, Negar Mortazavi, told Al Jazeera.
“When Israel wanted to attack Beirut last week, Tehran sent a serious warning to Washington that they would not tolerate attacks on Beirut, and they just proved that the warning was not a mere threat,” Mortazavi added.
Iran has always maintained that Lebanon has been an integral part of any peace arrangement, even as Israel and the United States sought to treat it as a separate issue. In many ways, Tehran is trying to send a clear message: any attack on its regional allies will invite a direct escalation.
Lebanon was drawn into the Iran-Israel conflict early on, when Iran-backed Hezbollah opened a second front on March 2 by launching attacks on northern Israeli cities.
While the ceasefire between Iran and Israel largely held until June 7, the Benjamin Netanyahu government continued military operations in southern Lebanon, keeping one of the conflict’s most volatile flashpoints alive.
For Iran, Israel’s attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs was the tipping point. On Sunday, Israeli missiles struck two apartment buildings in a Hezbollah stronghold, killing two people and injuring at least 20 others, including women and children, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
The strikes came despite repeated US efforts to prevent a wider escalation, with Washington pressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt attacks on Beirut. US President Donald Trump had also repeatedly urged Israel in the preceding days to refrain from actions that could derail diplomatic efforts and jeopardise ongoing negotiations with Tehran.
However, those appeals went unheeded. Netanyahu maintained that Israel’s military had targeted and dismantled “terrorist headquarters in the Dahieh district of Beirut” in response to Hezbollah rocket fire into Israeli territory.
Tehran then responded overnight by firing about 30 missiles at Israel, according to an Israeli military official, and said the attack was retaliation for the Beirut strikes.
Israel followed with strikes on military sites and defence systems inside Iran. Iran’s National Emergency Medical Organisation said at least 15 people were wounded in Monday’s Israeli strikes, while no deaths had been reported so far. In Gaza, Israeli strikes on Monday killed at least five people, including a child, and wounded several others.
The latest exchange also had an immediate regional impact. Iraq’s Civil Aviation Authority announced a 72-hour closure of Iraqi airspace after the renewed attacks, although the airspace had reopened by Monday. Yemen’s Houthi rebels also fired a missile towards Israel and threatened to resume attacks on shipping through the Red Sea, one of the world’s key maritime corridors.
As the strikes continued, Trump posted a series of messages on Truth Social. In one post, he wrote, “Israel and Iran must immediately stop ‘shooting.’ President DONALD J. TRUMP,” and minutes later said “final negotiations” towards a peace agreement were continuing, “subject to ignorance or stupidity getting in its way.” He later said both Israel and Iran were “looking to do an immediate CEASEFIRE.”
The escalation unfolded amid a strained relationship between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In an interview with the Financial Times on Sunday, Trump said of Netanyahu, “I call the shots. I call all the shots. He doesn’t call the shots.”
By Monday, Iran’s military joint command said it was suspending its offensive operations, but warned that any further “aggression and hostile acts” by Israel or its supporters, including in southern Lebanon, would bring “much more severe and crushing measures than before.”
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